


Flesh and Blood

by NoelleAngelFyre



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Gotham (TV)
Genre: A short tale of orphaned girls and tigers in the night, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Intimacy, F/M, Ghosts of the Past - Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Non-sexual physical closeness, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-13 01:27:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11174148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoelleAngelFyre/pseuds/NoelleAngelFyre
Summary: Her monsters were of flesh and blood, once.





	Flesh and Blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Queen of the Seven Hells (miranda90)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miranda90/gifts).



> Nope, can't leave these two alone. And I dedicate this one to Queen of the Seven Hells, whose comment on a previous work made me so incredibly happy. :) This one's for you, my friend!
> 
> *************************************************************************
> 
> Disclaimer: I own no characters or events related to "Gotham" or the "Batman" franchise. Iris DeLaine is my original creation, as is her story. Nothing more.
> 
> Warning: The rating is for semi-graphic descriptions. Playing it safe, in case anyone might be triggered or disturbed. Thank you.

In a bitter twist of irony, it’s a ceremonial burial, the symbolic gesture of putting old ghosts to rest, which unleashes a torrent of monsters from their confines.

Her monsters were of flesh and blood, once, but now they come to her with translucent skin stretched tight over decaying bones. Eyes hollow and dark, vacant voids of gaping black, peer at her and gleam red. Red like blood. Blood dripping from veins splintering within empty confines of flesh; limbs wear the rusting shades of life-liquid like morbid garments of rotted silk.

Death, decay, horror. It surrounds her.

_“Poor little wench.”_ The voices sound the same. None is distinct from the rest. But the words are familiar to her, and memory plays back a haunted reel of recollection, such that she can put details where they lack on these twisted mockeries of face and form.

_“If only the mistress would pay her greater mind. Perhaps she might have character. Personality.”_

_“Instead, she sits and stares.”_

One voice huffs, loud and irate. _“Can’t you send her away, Marcus darling? She is such a wretched thing to behold.”_

Another laughs, shrill in the silence. _“How like a little doll she is! Why, I could put her up on a shelf right now!”_

She draws to the corner, as she always has, and wraps limbs around herself, as she always did. It does not protect her. Nothing can shield her now. The monsters are free and they will have their pound of flesh.

_“She’s such a dull creature. Honestly, why does Maria not let her play with the other children?”_

_“And let her grow fat and spoiled like the rest?”_

_“As though she could ever become fat. Emaciated little thing, she is.”_

“Stop…” she whimpers. She cannot be strong, not now. Her monsters know where to strike, to draw blood, to cleave flesh from bone. They know, and they are hungry. So very hungry.

The darkness grows thick, heavy. Chilled hands, descending from shadows, clutch at her. Their grip is relentless, fingers biting into flesh. She is naked, vulnerable. They draw blood. Ravenous beasts of Hell, all of them.

Both of them.

_“I brought you into this world,”_ and her eyes widen, blood cold in veins, _“and I will take you from it.”_

No…but her lips make no movement. Her strength fails her. Even in such an intimate recreation, every detail drawn from senses never forgetting that which has assaulted them, she cannot be as she was that night. She is weak. She is every bit the weak little thing she has always been called. And this monster holds in his grasp without mercy. The cold bite of metal presses into her brow. Her nostrils fill, flooded, with the bitter tang of blood and copper and oil.

_“You belong to me.”_ the click of a trigger, bending beneath its master’s will. _“Your life is mine to start. Mine to end.”_

“No.” she trembles, quakes violently. She cannot run. She is trapped, kept tight by bonds unknown and unseen. She can’t breathe. “No!”

_“Goodbye, dear daughter.”_

She waits for the gunshot, for the bullet, but it does not come. From shadows, the monsters return. What little resemblance to humanity they possessed is gone: the translucent veil of flesh, disintegrated, and they reach out with limbs dripping fresh blood. The stench overwhelms her. Their hands descend, grasping, clutching, pinning her in place. She can’t move. She can’t breathe. They rip and tear, fingers clawing merciless, peeling away skin and muscle while blood flows hot and fresh, pulsing river spilling from its prison.

She’s screaming. Screaming for it to stop. It hurts. _It hurts. Oh God—someone, anyone, please make it stop!!!_

The darkness seizes her voice. It locks a grip over her lips and suffocates the breaths on which her pleas for help come. Still, she fights. She fights the monsters ripping into her flesh and the shadows silencing her anguish. She thrashes. She fights for space, for freedom, for—

“ _Iris._ ”

That voice.

“Iris.”

She knows that voice.

“It’s alright, sweet girl. I’m here.”

…a tiger. A tiger’s paw, claws sheathed, resting firm but gentle over panting lips. And around her, the soothing heat of a body enveloping her, keeping her where shadows and their monsters cannot reach.

“Now come back to me, sweet one.”

Her eyes will not close, then she realizes they were never open. She does not dare look, not yet. The monsters linger, voices cold scrapes of empty noise on her conscious mind. Should she look, should she dare, they might—

Thumbs press beneath her eyes, running slow paths at closed lids. “Open your eyes, darling girl. Look at me.”

He speaks. She obeys.

“They came for me.” she breathes, voice trembling off a leaden tongue. “They came, and you were gone from me.”

His smile is sharp at her brow, visible only to her skin. His fingers card through hair, blissfully ignorant of damp roots and the tangled mess of strands ruined by old ghosts of the mind. “My sweet one,” he murmurs, low and gentle, and she curls into his shape, into the black-clad forms stretched across the old bedsheets at her side, “I am never gone from you.”

No, he isn’t, and is this moment not proof? The boundaries established by this place, this home for damaged orphans, mean nothing to her tiger as he slinks past closed doors and windows to lie with her and protect her when she is vulnerable and defenseless against the demons of thirteen wretched years. His heat invites her, draws her ever nearer, and chases away the bitter chill of her soul’s winter storm.

“You will always be there, will you not?” fingers wrap within dark folds; once more, she draws the scent of blood and metal, but it comforts now, when it emits from him and not blood-soaked monsters. “You will never let me go, will you, Victor?”

His arms thread beneath her, around her; he draws her to his heart, the gentle beat of life within a cage of bone and flesh, and rests a cheek at her temple. “You are mine, Iris.” He breathes, a secret meant only for them, for him and her, always and forever. “And I will never let you go.”

It never occurs to her, not as she returns to dreams with a tiger’s heartbeat to lull away the ghosts, a day might come where she regrets that vow.


End file.
